Jean-Paul is gone again. Suddenly, my problems at work don't seem so important. This time he only stayed three days. It’s always worse in the summer. He can stay gone for two weeks or more if the weather is good. It makes me sick to think what he’s up to because that kid has more looks than brains—and a self-destructive nature. It's a bad combination. There's something out there that keeps drawing him back, but it's not drugs, so what is it?
It's not that I don't understand the pull of the street. I do. It's hard to take the street out of the kid. The freedom is addictive, but you pay a high price for that kind of freedom. You have to have balls of steel to survive. JP isn't like that. He's soft and vulnerable, easily lead. That's why I worry. It's just a matter of time now. I could go mad thinking about it.
Still, how many times can I say the same thing over and over? I don’t know how to get through to him. How do you talk to a teenager? I don’t know. I was nothing like him when I was 17. I could take care of myself—but then again, I was never really a kid. My childhood ended the minute I was born.